Benghazi Transcripts: White House Misled The American People On Obama's Preparations For 9/11

Newly declassified documents obtained by Fox News, show that a press release issued by the White House Press Office on the eve of the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, misled the public about military preparedness in Libya on the anniversary of 9/11.

On Sept. 10, 2012 — the day before Al Qaeda-linked terrorists carried out the bloody assault on the U.S. consulate and a related annex in Benghazi — the White House Press Office issued a press release entitled “Readout of the President’s Meeting with Senior Administration Officials on Our Preparedness and Security Posture on the Eleventh Anniversary of September 11th.”

The “Top Secret” documents reveal that the nation’s highest-ranking uniformed military officer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to Congress in executive session last year that the Sept. 10 meeting “was actually a conference call.”

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Moreover, Dempsey testified, Libya was never even discussed during the call, despite a persistent and increasingly worrisome stream of threat reporting from that country, and from Benghazi in particular.

The Sept. 10 press release stated that the session had covered the “specific measures we are taking” and “steps taken” to protect Americans and U.S. facilities abroad. It also related an order from President Obama for all agencies to “do everything possible to protect the American people, both at home and abroad.”

Yet the declassified documents – transcripts from 450 pages of closed-door testimony taken from Dempsey, and other key military officials by the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations – show that that not a single directive had been issued by the president or Defense Secretary Leon Panettato strengthen US military force posture anywhere in the world as 9/11 loomed.

Asked on Tuesday about the declassified testimony, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, whose office issued the Sept. 10 document, accused Fox News of trying to “color outside the lines” and brushed aside the fact that neither Panetta nor Dempsey took action to adjust force posture after the conference call with the president. “Our military and our other services devoted to our national security don’t wait until September 10th to prepare for contingencies on an anniversary like September 11th – of any year,” Carney said.

As Fox News notes, Carney didn’t specify what other measures were taken.

He also didn’t specify what measures were taken at a White House briefing held six days after the attacks, on Sept. 18, 2012.

Carney told reporters at that time, “There were numerous steps taken, as there have been every year on the anniversary of 9/11.”

Fox News concludes, “in crafting the Sept. 10 press release, the White House appears to have tiptoed around the fact that the subject of the 9/11 anniversary had been relegated to a conference call, as the opening sentence alluded to the auditory manner in which the commander in chief had digested the session’s substance: Earlier today the President heard from key national security principals on our preparedness and security posture on the eve of the eleventh anniversary of September 11th.“

This is the MO of this administration: political expedience + happy talk = Success! Robert Gates, in promoting his new book, “Duty, Memoirs of A Secretary at War”, has been telling people, this White House has politicized national security to a degree he’s never seen before.

Happy talk on 9/10 about having a plan of action isn’t the same thing as actually putting one in place. That takes time and at least a degree of concern about Americans who are serving abroad – but the summer of 2012 was all about Obama – fundraisers, speeches, rallies, talk shows. (Then again – every season of every year is all about Obama regardless of his reelection campaign.) The happy talk was going to have to be enough.

It wasn’t.

So the Regime went into full CYA mode with the BS story about a protest gone awry, which Jay Carney was happy to disseminate to reporters in the White House briefing room for days after the attack, although now he scoffs at Fox News for suggesting it: “Of course it was an attack!”

From the September 14, 2012 press briefing.

Carney: “These protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region.” He added: “We don’t know otherwise. We don’t have information to suggest that it was a pre-planned, uh, attack. The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to this video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive.”

Carney only uses the word “attack” in order to dismiss the possibility that it was an attack.

Carney continued: “And while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9-11 anniversary that we know of, or to US policy.”

Jake Tapper asks — this is three days after the attack — whether the White House believes that the violence resulted from protests over a movie.

Carney responds, “Look, this is obviously under investigation and after some back and forth, says “What I’m telling you is, this is under investigation. The unrest around the region has been in response to this video. We do not at this moment have information to suggest that, to tell you, would indicate that any of this unrest was pre-planned.”

Again, Carney refused to call Benghazi an “attack.” He went out of his way to deny that it was.

We now know that the White House had information within minutes of the massacre indicating it was a pre-planned, al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist attack. There was never any reason to believe that it sprang from a spontaneous demonstration over a Youtube video, (although there was anger about the video sweeping across the Arab world, and there had been protests in Cairo.)

Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Jay Carney knew that the anti-Mohammed video was but a peripheral concern in Benghazi – but used the narrative so they wouldn’t get blamed for their disgraceful lack of preparation. They muddied the waters, knowing the MSM would aid and abet them in disseminating their fraudulent narrative and enough people would be fooled, to get him through the news cycle. They lied to the American people about Benghazi because they could..

But Jay Carney’s job is to collect information about actions and events within the president’s administration and share it with reporters so the American people can have some access to the workings of government here and abroad.. It is supposed to be fact-based.

Bryan Preston of PJ Media is calling on Congress to haul Carney before Congress and ask him to explain the difference between what he said in the days after the attack, and what he is saying now. Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and the President himself, should also present themselves to Congress and answer some questions.